#japanese queer cinema

[cinemaobscura]

Funeral Parade of Roses | 薔薇の葬列 (1969) dir. Toshio Matsumoto

[wanderlust-in-my-soul]

Old Narcissus

Category: Short Film Country: Japan Where to watch?: GagaOOLala Year: 2017 Finished: 30.05.2023

Every now and then I search through Gaga’s leaving soon section and watch random stuff. And once in a while I am sitting in front of my PC and thinking what the fuck have I just watched? This is one of those days! Biggest spoiler alert!

Bag moth Monta. Monta is alone again today. Blown by the wind since birth. Where are your mom and dad? Blown softly by the spring wind. Baby Monta flew away. Goodbye to his brothers. Bag moth Monta alone in is home of small branches he picked up. The tree leaves go red and then his friends just left. Beetle said winter’s coming and flew to the east. He was all alone after all. He picked up fallen leaves, his home of crimson maple.

Old Narcissus tells us the story about an old picture book writer and his obsession with his own beauty and his need of pain to feel sexual fulfilled. When he was a young man he liked to be tortured by older and not so, well, beautiful men. Then the pain became pleasure. Now that he himself is old, he wants to feel this pleasure again, but robbed of his own beauty, he can’t really enjoy the gift which young Leo is giving him, whipping his ass as if there is no tomorrow. That’s when our old picture book writer faints. Afterwards they share a nice moment and a good conversation about the picture book about a moth. Leo doesn’t want to charge him any money and they change Line-IDs.

When our old picture book writer is on his way back home, he meets a homeless man, aesthetically not very pleasing and the kind of man, our writer would have loved as a young man. And with that he gives the homeless guy money and is willing to be bound with handcuffs on a rooftop, by a total stranger, to be beaten with the paddle. But the homeless dude doesn’t give a fuck about what our writer wants and just beats him up and robs him in the end. Luckily, he had exchanged the Line-ID before and now he can text Leo for help…with his tongue…A picture I won’t forget that soon (I don’t like other people’s salvia, it grosses me out).

Leo comes to the rescue, exact at the moment when our writer tries to jump from the roof. They scream and fight and Leo claps the writer’s ass till he gives up and both are exhausted.

It sounds like a wild ride, and to be fair, it is. It shows how transient beauty is. And how hard it can be for people to get old. Especially people whose biggest joy was their own beauty. Not just the biggest joy, but their biggest pleasure giver. And now everyone is more beautiful than you and you are just one of those hideous old men to whom you have always felt superior.

And for Leo, our writer is kind of a father figure. His own father ended his own life and the writer’s book was something that helped him through dark times.

Both are kind of lost in this world and could give each other some support while struggling.   

In the end it is not a bad short film. It had some issues and flaws, but it was not bad.

[ahneunjin]

Funeral Parade of Roses 薔薇の葬列 (1969) dir. Matsumoto Toshio

[funwiki]

Monster (dir. Kore-eda, 2023)

Feeling kinda empty after watching Monster. The movie is a wave of different details about living, trying to survive, becoming a monster in the eyes of others. They — the boys, the teacher, the mother — just wanted to live. To be happy. You can't be happy being a monster, or you can?

[celluloidrainbow]

きのう何食べた? | WHAT DID YOU EAT YESTERDAY? (2021) dir. Kazuhito Nakae Kakei Shiro is a 45-year-old lawyer who works at a small law firm. He is good at cooking and a meticulous and thrifty person who keeps the monthly food budget to 25,000 yen. Shiro’s daily routine is to leave work on time and head to a discount supermarket nearby. His partner Yabuki Kenji is an affable hairdresser also in his 40s. They share a two-bedroom apartment and the finer points of two men living together come up at the dining table every day. Although two of them have been in a relationship for three years and Shiro's parents know of his sexuality, he never shares the fact that he is gay or Kenji is his partner to anyone. Based on the manga and series of the same name. (link in title)

[esqueletosgays]

MONSTER (2023)

Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda Cinematography: Ryuto Kondo

[ahjong]

Looking for an Angel (1999) dir. Akihiro Suzuki

[lostinmac]

Monster (2023)

Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

[bimbomoviebash]

Tomie: Forbidden Fruit, 2002

[silentagecinema]

funeral parade of roses (1969) directed by toshio matsumoto

"I am the wound and the dagger, both the victim and the executioner!”

[grovesnail]

NW: shinjuku boys a documentary on transgender men in Tokyo. working as host club owners, the documentary explores what its like to be transmasc in 1995 japan.

[phantomladyoverparis]

Yagate umi e to todoku AKA One Day, You Will Reach The Sea (2022), dir.  Ryûtarô Nakagawa  

[celluloidrainbow]

性別が、ない！インターセックス漫画家のクィアな日々 | NO GENDER! THE QUEER LIFE OF AN INTERSEX MANGA ARTIST (2018) dir. Shôgo Watanabe Up to the age 30, Sho Arai lived as a woman, but was found to be intersex after chromosome testing. Sho now lives as neither man nor woman, and creates essay manga based on the changes their body has undergone. Sho has been dispatching messages on how to live to young readers who are also struggling with their gender identity. Sho lives with their assistant, Koh, a young gay man who they met 10 years ago at a vocational school where they teaches manga. Koh has himself debuted as a manga artist and come out publicly. When Sho reveals the inner state of their mind on camera, their relationship moves in an unexpected direction. (link in title)

[esqueletosgays]

MUSCLE (1989)

Director: Hisayasu Satō Cinematography: Kôichi Saitô

[fibula-rasa]

Favorite New-to-me Films—May ‘24

READ on BELOW the JUMP!

(listed in order pictured above, L to R)

Family Life (1924)

[letterboxd | imdb]

Synopsis: A family tries to adjust to unstable housing situations in Los Angeles, to an outrageous extent. 

Adventurous and inventive gags with a charming family unit. Humorously distressing that the dog does not reappear after the balloon bit! (Potential content warning that there is a gag centered on the wife’s weight but it’s not malicious.)

—

Michael (1924)

[letterboxd | imdb | kanopy (us)]

Synopsis: Aging artist Claude Zoret and his apprentice/model, Michael, live a contented life together until the machinations of an impoverished Russian noble and a jealous friend drive them apart.

To begin, this is a queer love story and it is also a tragedy. But, it’s important to note that the tragedy is not derived from the queerness itself, which sets Michael apart from many other queer romantic dramas. Benjamin Christensen’s performance as the heartbroken artist is spectacular. Dreyer’s direction is as great and as heartfelt as it always is. You kinda can’t beat the cinematographic team-up of Karl Freund and Rudolph Maté. It’s available on kanopy, which you may have free access to through your local library!

—

Rafiki (2018)

[letterboxd | imdb | tubi (US)]

Synopsis: Two young women in Nairobi, Kena and Ziki, start a romance despite intense homophobia in their community. To further complicate matters, their fathers are political rivals in the upcoming local election. 

The characters of Rafiki were all well wrought—both the leads and the supporting characters. Of the supporting roles, I especially appreciated Kena’s friend Blacksta and her parents. The setting made the story more compelling, from the community and class differences in the neighborhood to the different residents’ relationship with church-going. 

All that said, I did feel like the plot was a little too simplistic given the complicated nature of the characters’ relationships and feelings. There are a lot of valid approaches to balancing out the different aspects of storytelling on film, but in Rafiki the balance just felt a bit off. Regardless, I still recommend checking it out, albeit with the warning that the main characters are physically assaulted in the film and it’s executed pretty viscerally.

—

Slayers Great (1997)

[letterboxd | imdb]

Synopsis: In the further misadventures of Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent, the sorceresses get tied up in a family feud that culminates in a battle between an aggressively cute Lina golem and an improbably proportioned Naga golem.

We’ve been watching the Slayers OVAs in chronological order and it’s been fun seeing Lina and Naga’s relationship develop as they keep finding themselves in disastrously goofy situations. 

—

Reassemblage: From the Firelight to the Screen (1983)

[letterboxd | imdb | kanopy (US)]

Synopsis: An ethnographic documentary about ethnographic documentary. Trịnh T. Minh-hà travels to Senegal to make a documentary about Senegalese women, but instead interrogates the work of ethnographic filmmaking and particularly the way African women are captured in the eurocentric gaze.

Like Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza (1973), which I talked about last month, this film is part of a broader discourse and has significant extra-filmic context, so it’s not one to recommend freely. However, I feel like Reassemblage is so formally interesting that you could get a whole lot out of it even if you’re not fully tuned into the conversation Minh-hà is having about ethnography. Stylistically, Reassemblage is fantastic work. The rhythm of the editing with the sound, narration, and dialogue is so sophisticated and often revelatory. (Content warning for dead animals.)

—

Just Around the Corner (1921)

[letterboxd | imdb]

Synopsis: An ailing widowed mother has one hope before dying: that her adult children have some promise of a stable life after she’s gone. Unfortunately, her good-hearted and overly-trusting daughter has taken up with a caddish “ticket speculator.” As their mother’s condition deteriorates, the siblings are in a rush to find solace for their mother.

A solid melodrama from Frances Marion with endearing characters. I will say that the manner in which Fred Thomson’s character as “The Real Man” is incorporated was unexpected. I also find it pretty cheeky that Marion cast her real-life husband as a character credited as “The Real Man.” 

—

Thundering Hoofs (1924)

[letterboxd | imdb]

Synopsis: A cowboy finds himself at odds with a two-faced bandit. The cowboy falls for a young lady visiting from Mexico, but her father has been bamboozled into promising her hand to the bandit. The cowboy and his trusty horse travel to Mexico to save the señorita and expose the bandit’s true identity.

First off: I’m absolutely not a Western gal. 

My initial feeling after watching this was that it was just okay (though I immediately loved Silver King.) And the contemporary response was similar: that Thundering Hoofs was entertaining enough, but nothing spectacular. 

Then, for “How’d They Do That,” I watched some Tom Mix—some partially and one feature in its entirety. That feature is regarded as one of Mix’s best. My feelings on that film made me reevaluate Thundering Hoofs. 

The stunts might not have been as ambitious, but the film captures what a well-rounded performer Fred Thomson was. The filmmakers also did an exceptional job communicating that Silver King the horse is a full-blown character in his own right. I’m sure that sounds ludicrous and it is. It’s a big reason the movie was enjoyable to watch as someone who doesn’t care for Westerns. I, for one, have never seen it implied on film that a horse gave a man a christian burial. No really. 

Anyway, watching this added to my disappointment that most of Thomson’s films are lost, because if Thundering Hoofs was middling quality for him, I’d love to see his best. (Content warnings for minor, less-than-enlightened presentation of a Chinese cook and some of the Mexican characterizations.)

—

Wedding in Galilee / Urs al-jalil (1987)

[letterboxd | imdb] 

Synopsis: A Palestinian man petitions the Israeli governor to allow an extension of their imposed curfew so that they can celebrate his son’s wedding. The governor and his staff agree only on the condition that they attend the wedding. Understandably, this creates tense situations in the community and the man’s family.

Easily the best new-to-me film I watched this month, and maybe one of the best I’ve watched all year. This is my first Michel Khleifi film and I look forward to checking out more. It’s a beautiful, stressful work of art, exquisitely constructed. Highly recommend this one.

—

As always, if any of these films catch your eye, but you need specific trigger/content warnings, don’t hesitate to ask for them!

—

This month I didn’t have the best overall luck with new-to-me films (honestly, it was a crappy month all around.) Revisiting Wings (1927) and Cobra (1925)was fun tho. 

Honorable mention to End of the World (1931), which is kind of a mess in its surviving form though still visually interesting. It has that quality that you can sometimes feel when the cut of a film that gets released is not the filmmakers’ vision. And, knowing now that End of the World was significantly cut down, I don’t have much doubt that what Gance had originally created must have been much stronger.

—

As for the blog, I highlighted the work of a mess of stunt performers of the silent era in the second installment of “How’d They Do That”

Risking Life and Limb for $25

—

That post ended up delayed as the original article I chose for the series had a subject with no known surviving/accessible films! But, I compiled my research and posted about her separately:

Stunting into Stardom: Winnie Brown

Those posts together meant an unintended Western theme infiltrated the blog via my intended Stunting theme! There’s one more post on the topic of Westerns that’ll be up this month, but I promise we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming after that. 

Although, I’ve been reading Unthinking Eurocentrism, where, in the chapter “The Imperial Imaginary,” the authors note that between 1926 and 1967 a quarter of Hollywood features were Westerns. That sort of made me realize that, even though this is not solely a Hollywood history themed blog, it’s an oversight that I’ve never shared any work on Westerns. 

Anyway, thank you for your patience with me if you are also not a Western person!

As for themed gif/still sets I made this month:

Daredevil of the Movies / Filmens Vovehals (1923)

Poplar Tree / Тополя (1996)

And I also shared additional gifs from the movies featured in “Risking Life and Limb for $25”:

Wings (1927)

The Trail of ‘98 (1928)

The Great K & A Train Robbery (1926)

As for the coming month, the next installment of “Lost, but not Forgotten” is incoming and I’ve made a lot of progress on my Salomé cosplay.

Stay tuned and happy viewing!

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[2arttt]

Eddie: “This is my first movie and I'm interested. My circumstances are like his. That's one reason. And the gay life is portrayed beautifully”.

Funeral of Parade of Roses (1996)

Toshio Matsumoto